2011 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X - Lambo Hunter

Chase Lautenbach is looking to snack on some Underground Racing Lambos with his 1,000hp Evo X

“It’s just a dyno queen.” If you’re a road racer or autocrosser or even a drifter, chances are you’ve made a snide comment just like this about some insanely high horsepower project that wasn’t built for motor-sports, but rather to post a huge number on the dyno and dominate on the street. We’re talking head-to-head high-speed highway pulls in monster horsepower Lambos, Supras, and GT-Rs, like the ones you’ve probably seen doing battle on YouTube at the TX2K annual gathering for horsepower addicts.

Iowa native Chase Lautenbach developed his need for extreme speed at a young age, thanks in large part to the influence of the Fast & Furious films. He’s still just a “dumb 22-year-old kid who likes to have fun and go fast,” but that doesn’t change the fact that Chase and his Hawkeye State partners from 3D Motorsports and DKT Performance have built the most powerful and fastest street-going Mitsubishi Evolution X in the world.

Chase originally bought this Evo as a fun daily driver that he could take to the track for some hot laps. “Honestly, all I wanted to do was an intake, exhaust, and some suspension stuff, but after my first time at the track with the car [the second weekend he owned it], I knew I was completely hooked on it. Still, my plans were not to do anything major, maybe just a little bit bigger turbo and e85 so I could keep up with the Corvettes better down the straightaways.” But after a ton of track days and autocross events, the stock 4B11T had burnt valves and needed a rebuild. That’s when things got serious.

“My real motivation for building the street monster we now have on our hands was from one of my friends, Lance from Texas. He is the guy who got me to jump ship on an all-out track build and instead build a monster street Evo X. I work on the side for a street race video company called 1320video, and we were out filming Lance’s Evo 8 at TX2K12. His car made almost 900 whp. When he got on it and it literally walked sideways down the interstate at 3 a.m. at 120 mph, I knew I had to have a fast Evo in my life,” Chase said.

It wasn’t long after that he teamed up with Chad Vincent at 3D Motor-sports, who’s done all the wrenching on this Evo, and Devin Torgerson from DKT Performance, who’s been the main source for all the go-fast goodies. As Chase explained, “The turning point during the build was when Devin and I decided we wanted to go crazy and shoot for an Evo X horsepower record just as Chad from 3D Motorsports was sending me pictures of my freshly rebuilt short-block. Chad, being the awesome builder he is, loved the new plan, so we sent the complete block back to Dave’s Crankshaft Service for sleeving and porting.”

From that point on, the goal was to build the highest horsepower Evo X in the world and have it still be an all-around street car. That meant keeping the air conditioning, power steering, and stereo, while making enough all-wheel-drive jam to beat the 816-whp record. With an ERL sleeved 2L block stuff with CP pistons, Manley rods, and held together with ARP fasteners, Chad and his team at 3D Motorsports then bolted up the Extreme Turbo Systems twin-scroll turbo system built around a Precision 6466 snail capable of supporting up to 1,000 hp.

Once all the other supporting mods were in place, including a Buschur Racing double pumper kit with modified Walbro 255-lph fuel pumps and FIC 2150cc fuel injectors, Chase handed the keys to Justin “Hollywood” Garrett at Precision Violence, who tuned the factory ECU using EvoScan. The end result was certainly worthy of a nickname like Hollywood, because Chase’s Evo X didn’t just break the horsepower record, it smashed it to pieces with an astounding Dynojet-spec 908.7 awhp at a mind-blowing 42 psi of boost.

Chase and his team knew a gearbox capable of holding 608 lb-ft of torque would be a necessity, so the 5-speed manual was shipped to Jacks Transmissions in Colorado for a complete overhaul that fixed the center diff pin issue and the 3-4 fork wear issue, along with synchro blueprinting to eliminate the annoying third gear crunch that plagues these gearboxes.

Like most street dominator builds, Chase has kept the exterior of his Evo X looking pretty subtle, simply adding a Rexspeed carbon-fiber front lip, fog light deletes, and a duckbill spoiler to go along with the lowered and widened stance, thanks to AMR coilovers and 18x10.5-inch Enkei NT03+M wheels and 275/35R18 Hankook Ventus V12 Evo tires.

His crew rolled out for TX2K13 with the intention of shocking some of the big boys in the high-speed street scene, including Underground Racing and its world-famous Lamborghinis. There’s a lot of video evidence of Chase’s TX2K adventure on 1320video’s YouTube channel, including some seriously epic highway pulls and some equally impressive parking lot trash talk with the Underground Racing crew (who wouldn’t give Chase a fair run, unfortunately). Clearly, our boy Chase doesn’t mind a bit of drama, since as he put it, “I’d like to give a shout-out to the UR guys for making me famous, even though they wouldn’t race me.”

Special Thanks Chad Vincent at 3D Motorsports and his wife, Mandy, for not killing us for all the nights we kept him at the shop, Devin Torgerson at DKT Performance for helping me map out the build and getting me all my parts to make it happen, Kyle Loftis at 1320video for all the video coverage of the car that truly made this thing famous, Andrew Humphrey for being a huge help and the brain behind the build, Garrett Mitchell for spending countless hours in the car with me while tuning the ECU, and all my boys at 1320video for having my back throughout the build and while running my mouth at TX2K—haha—love you guys!